Forfit Posted January 8, 2006 Share Posted January 8, 2006 (edited) So i bought a brand new ANTEC SmartPower 500Watt PSU today. I go to plug it and and all the cables, and when i try to turn it on the computer won't start. And i mean it's absolutely dead, it won't do anything. A couple times the light on the power button will flash for a second but that's it. And it would make one short beep in the process. So what i do is go and put my Antec 350watt back in. I plug it in and everything, yet i have the same problem, but this time no beep. It won't boot it just sits there. I had this problem once before i remember, when i was upgrading from 250 to the 350, but all i had to do was flip the switch over in the back and flip it back again and that solved it. I don't know what else to do. Thanks. EDIT: I Guess i will add that if i turn the switch in the back to off, and hold the power button for about 10 seconds, i hear a sound that sounds like it's coming from the PSU, and then i flip the switch back on, push the power button on the case and it flashes for a second and the fans try to spin but then they stop. If i keep pushing the button then it does absolutely nothing until i flip the switch and hold the button again. Edited January 8, 2006 by Forfit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bond996 Posted January 8, 2006 Share Posted January 8, 2006 Please tell me you never ran your PSU with the switch set to 220v. If you ran it like that, your motherboard would probably fry. Or are you referring to the power switch? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forfit Posted January 8, 2006 Author Share Posted January 8, 2006 (edited) Please tell me you never ran your PSU with the switch set to 220v. If you ran it like that, your motherboard would probably fry. Or are you referring to the power switch? No. I am talking about the power switch (0,I). Here is an update: I just started off with the motherboard plugged in. The computer booted but it was making a looooooooong beeping sound. Next, i turned it off, and plugged in my video card which stopped the beeping, it booted again, and said it couldn't find a drive because i didn't have that plugged in either. So now i plug in the hard drive, and it says it still can't find one. Does that mean i need to Reinstall the OS now because the hdd crashed? Or do my BIOS need to be updated? I got into the BIOS. If i just let it go past the BIOS Screen that says HP, then it says "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER" or something along those lines, so i'm guessing that means that it isnt recognizing my hard drive and the light doesnt flash on the hdd either. Also, when i start the computer up now it no longer says "Geforce 6800 128mb" before the HP thing. Edited January 8, 2006 by Forfit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K^2 Posted January 8, 2006 Share Posted January 8, 2006 (edited) It sounds like it either isn't giving enough voltage to something. Get a voltmeter, even a cheap analog kind that you can buy at Radio Shack will work, and test the voltage between the black wire and each of red wires. You should get 5V and 12V, if you do not, something is wrong. Please tell me you never ran your PSU with the switch set to 220v. If you ran it like that, your motherboard would probably fry. Or are you referring to the power switch? I do not think it would harm the mobo if you set the switch to 220V. The way the transformer works, if you plug it into 120V and set the switch to 220V, the mobo and other components will be underpowered, receiving a little less than 3V on the 5V cable, and arround 7V or 8V on the 12V cable. I don't think underpowering is harmfull to any component, though, nothing will run this way. On the other hand, in other countries, if you set the switch to 120V and plug it into 220V source, it can cause major problems, most likely, burining out the motherboard and/or PSU itself. Speaking of which, maybe he does have it set to 220V. It would explain why things are refusing to work. CMOS chips are great for accepting a range of voltages, but many components use TTL that will never work underpowered or overpowered. Edited January 8, 2006 by K^2 Prior to filing a bug against any of my code, please consider this response to common concerns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forfit Posted January 8, 2006 Author Share Posted January 8, 2006 If it has to do with voltages, hell, i'll just send the PSU back and trade it in. Also, i reseated my ram just for fun. But it just won't boot the Harddrive. And yes i have my PSU on the right Voltage, but ya'll are saying stuff like 120v, when the back of the psu reads 115v and 230v. It's on 115. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K^2 Posted January 8, 2006 Share Posted January 8, 2006 (edited) Could be 115V. To be honest, I don't remeber whether outlets give 115V or 120V. There really isn't that much difference between the two. The other one is set to 230V, most likely, because it is easy to set up the transformer to accept two voltages 2x appart. Eurpoe does use 220V for sure, but again, 220V and 230V do not make that much difference. As I said, it sounds like the output voltage is lower, which could happen if insulation on one of the coils gets burnt creating a shortcircuited section, for example. However, I'm not sure if it is what is happening. If you do things with a computer, you might want to have a multimeter lying arround anyways, so I would reccomend getting one and testing the outputs. Just make sure to test the voltage, not current. Edit: Just checked an outlet, and it shows 120.2V, so I guess the 115V is just for better compatibility with Europe, with exactly double that being used. Edited January 8, 2006 by K^2 Prior to filing a bug against any of my code, please consider this response to common concerns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forfit Posted January 8, 2006 Author Share Posted January 8, 2006 Thanks for the help K^2, but you see the thing is, i hooked my 500 watt back up and it won't rexognize the drive. And then i hooked up my 350 watt again just for the fun of it, and the same thing happens. There's no way that the voltages all the sudden happened to drop or something on both PSU's especially when the 350 has been working flawlessly for months, i was just upgrading before i got my newer gfx card, now i'm really screwed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K^2 Posted January 8, 2006 Share Posted January 8, 2006 Oh, sorry. I read that wrong. I thought you said that it did work with the old 350 supply. So you say that the system stops working at all after you connect the HDD? Can you try connecting that HDD to another system or try this system with another HDD? Prior to filing a bug against any of my code, please consider this response to common concerns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|Zephyr| Posted January 8, 2006 Share Posted January 8, 2006 By reading all this, id say that something is wrong with your hard drive. Have you had any problems wit the hard drive recently? As k^2 said, if you can test this drive in another system, or test another drive in the troubled system, that would narrow things down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forfit Posted January 8, 2006 Author Share Posted January 8, 2006 I gave up on it for a while last night, but i was figuring it is the hard drive, i'm going to test a different hard drive in my system today sometime, and then i probably need a new one. I don't know how to reformat the thing because i can only get into the BIOS, and i don't have an XP Disk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K^2 Posted January 8, 2006 Share Posted January 8, 2006 I know I must sound like a broken record by now, but test the outputs of the PSU, just in case. If your PSU burned something out on the HDD, you don't want that to happen to another one. As I said before, there should be a 5V lead and a 12V lead. Anything above or bellow by more than 0.5V could be bad. Prior to filing a bug against any of my code, please consider this response to common concerns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forfit Posted January 8, 2006 Author Share Posted January 8, 2006 I will test it out when i get the chance, but i know now for sure that the hard drive crashed. I think i just need to reformat it and install XP and see what happens from there. I hope. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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